The Notebooks For The Idiot

This unique document of the Russian author's creative process is illustrated by facsimiles of original pages from his notebooks, which reveal at least eight plans for the story, each with numerous variations.

"This is an invaluable aid to the understanding not only of the finished work of art, but also of Dostoyevsky's strangely tortured yet confident creative process." — Modern Fiction Studies. "Superbly edited by Edward Wasiolek and well translated (despite difficult problems of rendering) by Katharine Strelsky." ― The New York Times Book Review. The central idea of The Idiot, according to its author, was "to depict a completely beautiful human being." More prosaically, the novel was intended to shore up Dostoyevsky's professional and financial state. The portrait of Prince Myshkin, a holy fool, was created in desperation amidst the squalid poverty engendered by the Russian writer's compulsive gambling. Dostoyevsky's entire future depended on the success of his next novel, which began as one story and ended as quite another. After publishing the first part of The Idiot in The Russian Messenger, Dostoyevsky had no idea how to continue the story. The second part, in fact, is a quite different novel. The author's notebooks reveal at least eight plans for the tale, with numerous variations on each plan. A unique document of the creative process, this volume is illustrated by facsimiles of original pages from the notebooks, offering a rich source of information about the development of Dostoyevsky's enigmatic novel.

This book is designed to guide readers through Dostoevsky's The Idiot, first published in 1869 and generally considered to be his most mysterious and confusing work.

Key to understanding Dostoyevsky's masterpiece offers facsimile pages plus interpretations of the author's schematic plans of major portions of the novel, deleted scenes, reflections on philosophical and religious ideas, more.

In Dostoevsky as Suicidologist, Amy D. Ronner illustrates how self-homicide in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s fiction prefigures Emile Durkheim’s etiology in Suicide as well as theories of other prominent suicidologists. This book not only fills a lacuna in Dostoevsky scholarship, but provides fresh readings of Dostoevsky’s major works, including Notes from The House of the Dead, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov. Ronner provides an exegesis of how Dostoevsky’s implicit awareness of fatalistic, altruistic, egoistic, and anomic modes of self-destruction helped shape not only his philosophy, but also his craft as a writer. In this study, Ronner contributes to the field of suicidology by anatomizing both self-destructive behavior and suicidal ideation while offering ways to think about prevention. But most expansively, Ronner tackles the formidable task of forging a ligature between artistic creation and the pluripresent social fact of self-annihilation.